Justice for All

Justice for All chronicles the career of Dick T. Morgan, an Oklahoma founding father whose public service reflects a passion for fairness that was sorely lacking in Gilded Age America. After arriving in the Unassigned Lands (later, central Oklahoma) with the first wave of non-Indian settlers on April 22, 1889, Morgan developed a reputation as the go-to lawyer for land disputes, built a substantial real estate business, and promoted church-building across Oklahoma Territory. During his tenure in Congress from 1909 until his death in 1920, he helped create institutions that were central to progressivism in the post-frontier period and have shaped modern America, including the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Federal Farm Credit System.

Morgan’s adeptness in working across the aisle in a perpetually divided Congress serves as a wake-up call to politicians in thrall to ideology and identity politics at the expense of the public welfare. His speeches, publications, correspondence, newspaper interviews, and congressional testimonies reveal him as a public servant whose bedrock principles were rooted in the Republican Party—that is, the party of Lincoln. In both public and private life, Morgan demonstrated a deep allegiance to what one of his role models, President James A. Garfield, defined as the heart and soul of the nation and the basis of a free government: the church, the school, and the home.

Justice for All owes its existence to Dick T. Morgan’s great-grandsons, David and Kenyon Morgan, who resolved to rescue their ancestor from a century of undeserved obscurity. Traveling, literally and figuratively, in their great-grandfather’s footsteps, the Morgan brothers combined their talents in a journey of discovery that helped this biographer illuminate the Progressive Era through the experiences of a native Hoosier who became one of his adopted state’s most beloved and influential citizens.